Friday, October 28, 2011

carpe diem...et rosae

I can be a bad influence. I don't mean in that You-Should-Do-Drugs-'Cause-It'll-Make-You-Cool kind of way. Rather, I encourage people to choose the better of two evils when locked in an internal conflict of conscience. For example, the following conversation occurred at work today:

Colleague: I really want to go to Sampan for lunch, but I shouldn't.
Me: Why not?
Colleague: I brought a sandwich, so I was just going to get soup.
Me: Okay...
Colleague: Aw man.... I just remembered how good their soup dumplings are...[self-flaggelation follows]
Me: You should go.
Colleague: No, I should eat my sandwich, otherwise it will go to waste. I'll just go tomorrow.
Me: You don't know tomorrow will come - no one is promised tomorrow. If you want to go, you should go today. [little horns start to poke up from under my hair]
Colleague: You're a bad influence.
Me: Yes.
Colleague: But I'm having dinner with my cousin after work, so the sandwich will go to waste.
Me: The sandwich you were eating earlier?
Colleague: Yes. But I still have half left.
Me: Okay, but it's 4:30 right now and you're working until 9, so you won't have dinner until 9:15 at the very earliest. You'll be back here at 5, you'll eat your other half-sandwich around 7 because you'll need a snack to get you through until dinner.
Colleague: You're a bad influence.
Me: Yes.

With that, Colleague headed out the door for his lunch of Kimchi Fried Rice and Soup Dumplings at Sampan. He came back 30 minutes later with a satisfied smile and the last bite of an ice cream cone that had been his dessert poking through his lips.

I try to live by that whole "carpe diem" thing. Some people think it's morbid when I point out that we don't know that we'll have tomorrow, but it's true and I'm just trying to be realistic - you don't know. People close their eyes on their last day every day - if today is mine, I want to know I had a good one and didn't say, "eh, tomorrow," as though I had a limitless supply.

Actually, one thing, before we move on to happy things - here is a clip from Brandon Lee's last interview before he died quite unexpectedly on the set of "The Crow." You can skip to minute 5 for the part that is relevant to the first part of this post.

Now, Angst also likes to live in the Now, and doesn't want a single opportunity to eat something he shouldn't to pass him by. Enter the newest object of his hungry lust:

Two or three times a year (anniversary, birthday, and/or Valentines day), Mister ignores that Angst likes to destroy my roses and gets them for me anyway. At that point, Angst commences to stalking them, so we have to take them in the bedroom at the end of each night.

Yesterday was Mister's and my fourth wedding anniversary, which we celebrated by me working until 9pm, freezing my butt off as I walked home, and then hugging some and deciding to go out tonight instead (when I was home from work much earlier). Nevertheless, he did a bunch of sweet things for me - he got me my beautiful roses, changed the kitty litter and lit a smelly candle, and turned on the heat so I'd be warm when I got home from work. He's a keeper!

After a full day of trying to find somewhere to fill the void of Horizons and wishing Vedge was open, we ended up at La Fourno, having an enjoyable Italian meal. I will say, they have some of the most creative and substantial salads I've seen - we had some trouble finding the lettuce under all the grilled veggies! There was nothing terribly outstanding but I do have one little word of advice for my friends at La Fourno: wine should never be served in a heated glass. They really need to work on differentiating "cellar temperature" from "pizza oven behind this wall" temperature.